Rise of The Iron Eagle (The Iron Eagle Series Book 1) (8 page)

Jim just shook his head. “I just don’t get it; he saved my life. It just makes no sense to me that he would kill the very people he was helping.” Steve was finishing off his beer when he answered, “He told us his reason. Jill was too close to catching him. Barry had done something or knew something that The Eagle felt deserved his death. Shit, he said that Barry knew Roskowski and what he had been doing; our meeting with him tonight was too cryptic. In all honesty, while Barry didn’t deserve to die like he did, the fact that he’s dead is probably the best thing for him.” There were several moments of silence between the two men. “Well…I need a shower and some sleep,” said Jim. Standing up, he thanked Javier for the beer. Steve stood as well, and Jim started for the door. “Wait!” Jim turned around. Steve asked, “Aren’t you forgetting something?” “What?” Steve shook his head. “Pay the damn tab.” Jim looked over to the bar and called to Javier, “Javier…Steve said I need to pay you for the beer!” Javier started laughing, “No public safety person ever pay for anything in my bar. You put your life on the line to protect me and the people. You can always eat and drink free here. This is home to you…now go and be safe.”

The two men walked out into the bright LA morning sunlight. It was half past seven. “You didn’t respond to my statement,” said Steve. “Yes…we need to catch him. You tell me where you think we need to start.” They stood looking at each other while standing on the corner of East Beverly and South Atlantic with the sound of the 60 Freeway in the distance. “Steve, I have a backup of homicide cases that’s six months old and that’s just current cases. I have a cold case file room that’s decades old. I can’t divert resources to one murderer when I have hundreds of others that need to be solved. You have way better resources than me. The Eagle is just as much your jurisdiction as mine. Expend your deep resources to find him.” Steve paced in front of the bar. “Shit…shit…shit…I have a backlog of murder cases that my office is investigating. I can’t just divert federal money for one guy. I mean this isn’t Osama fuckin’ Bin-Laden. The Eagle isn’t on the ten most wanted list, not yet at least.” “He’s not on any list; the guy’s a ghost, and outside of Jill and Barry’s murders, he has uncovered many dangerous serial killers that we didn’t even know existed. Look at Roskowski. While we weren’t able to save the past victims, we know that predator will never harm another human being. The only way we’re going to catch The Eagle is if he fucks up, either commits some high profile killing, or we stumble upon him while working a case.” Steve stared out at the street and the passing cars. “He won’t fuck up, Jim. This guy is way too cool, way too collected; he knows exactly what he’s doing and who he’s looking for. The only way we’re going to catch him is to do what he told me he’s able to do. Get into his mind and be able to be proactive in figuring out where he will strike next.” Jim started for his car, “Well, you feebees have been doing all kinds of mind altering experiments through the years. Trying to get into the heads of serial killers. Have you even done a profile on The Eagle?” Steve had a sheepish look on his face, “No.” “Well, why the hell not?” “What do we fuckin’ profile? You said it. The guy’s a ghost. We’ve never had a serial killer who only killed other serial killers.” Jim laughed and said, “So The Eagle is profiling his victims, which means he has the education and the tools to do the job. Gee…it seems to me that that information could be used to start a profile for The Eagle. Look I’m tired, and I’m off duty. I need a hot shower and sleep. I don’t know what you have going on, but you do your thing and I will do mine. We will keep in touch. Let’s try to see if we can work together to profile this guy. Outside of dumb ass luck. it’s the only way we’re gonna catch him.” And with that Jim walked on down Atlantic to his car, leaving Steve standing on the corner looking at the buildings and businesses, lost in what his next move was going to be.

Chapter Eight

‘What Jim didn’t know was that
someone else intercepted the
call to the crime scene and was
also watching the goings on.’

P
arson’s Trail’s silent. Other than the occasional call of a hawk, raven, or crow, nothing could be heard. Its high noon and a hot one. The storage container doors are closed, and Francis Statler, also known as the Basin River Killer, is cooking himself a steak and some eggs for lunch. The hum of a window air conditioner in his living room is the only sound in the cabin. He’s dressed in a pair of blue coveralls, nothing on underneath them. They’re wet with perspiration, and he sits down at the table in his kitchenette and eats his early afternoon meal in peace. He loved the solitude of his home. He inherited it after his grandmother and grandfather disappeared decades ago. He was a suspect, but the cops could never get enough evidence to arrest him. He laughs every now and then when he walks out onto the five acre property and visits their shallow graves. Looking around reminded him of them, and he took a bite of the bloody meat on his fork and said, “I’m due to visit you, Grandma and Grandpa. I will take a walk out to your grave tonight. I know you’re both happy I buried you together.”

He had had a busy morning. He finished up his second round of cleansing the Swine and decided he would take a little nap and then have some food before he started his afternoon activities with his prey. He finished his meal and filled a five gallon jug with water and threw some ice cubes into it before heading out to the steel shed. The thermometer on the side of the cabin was in the shade, but it showed one hundred five degrees. “Well, I better give those two some water, or they’ll expire prematurely,” he murmured to himself as he walked across the grassless gravel drive to the tan building. He opened the front access door, and his senses were assaulted by the smell of human feces and blood. Inside, the container was pitch black. He groped for a few seconds until he found the light switch. He clicked it on, and the two men began screaming.

They each had a steel bondage mouth restraint with a metal bit on each side holding their mouths and jaws open. There was no way to speak or close their mouths. He closed the door, and the noise disappeared behind it. He dropped the cooler on the floor and grabbed a long piece of barbed wire wrapped with concertina wire that shimmered in the lights above his head. He walked over to one of the men who was bloodied and hanging by the restraints and told him to shut up. He dropped the piece of wire to the ground at the man’s feet and walked back to the water jug. You could hear a pin drop in the container; the silence was deafening. He filled a rusty old coffee can with some water and walked back over and stood staring at his victim with the can of water in his hands. He put the can down and picked up a funnel with a long piece of clear plastic tubing on it and approached his victim.

“You want some water?” The man looked away. “You have to have water. Why it’s… one hundred and twenty-two degrees. You need water.” The man refused, so Francis picked up the funnel and drove the flexible tubing down his throat, bypassing his windpipe, and shoving the tube straight into his esophagus. Francis allowed it to hang down onto the man’s chest as he leaned down to retrieve the can of water. At five foot eight, one hundred ninety pounds, Francis wasn’t strong enough to handle a victim one on one unless restrained so keeping his victims restrained and sometimes sedated was very important. He always felt inferior to all people as a Black man, even others of his own race. He didn’t discriminate and prided himself on being an ‘equal opportunity killer.’ In fact, one of the two men he had in his shed was Black. He stood on a small stool in front of his victim and poured the cool water into the funnel.

“Nice and cold…feels good right?” The man’s head was forced back, and there was no way to speak. He left him in that position with the tubing in his throat and did the same to the man across from him. All the while, the two men hung against the hot steel walls. Francis walked over to a tool bench and picked up a drill with a one inch drill bit in it. He walked back over and stood between the two men. “Well, let’s get you both some more nice…cool….water.” He spent the next half hour filling the can and dumping the contents into the funnel until each man’s abdomen was distended from the weight of the water. He took a small container that had two malleable pieces of rubber in them and placed one in each of his ears. He was speaking in a matter of fact manner as he placed the product into his ears. “I have to have ear protection. You know, sometimes, the decibel level can get quite high in here. But don’t you two worry. I can still hear you, though your voices are softened by my ear plugs.”

He grabbed a soft light brush and began to stroke the penis of the first man. The man’s penis began to rise, and, as the erection got harder, Francis moved to grab the drill. He kept stroking the penis while the distention in the man’s abdomen started to decrease. “Ah…the water is being absorbed into your blood and intestines and is headed for your kidneys. Wonderful! You will have a full bladder very soon. He took the man’s penis in one hand and the drill in the other and cored down through the tip of his penis into the urethra. The screams were deafening. He pulled the drill bit out, blood and liquid dripped from its end. He grabbed a piece of corked wood that was a little over one inch in diameter and three inches long and jammed it into the end of the man’s penis. He made no noise as he had passed out from the pain. The other man had been watching all of this unfold and began screaming and thrashing as Francis picked up his tools and walked toward him. He finished with the second victim who, too, had lost consciousness.

Francis broke open some smelling salts and placed them under each man’s nose. They each awoke with the same screams of agony. He had removed the tubing from their throats but left the mouth apparatus in place. He had a chuck key in his hand and was turning it slowly to remove the drill bit while asking, “Who here has to pee?” The two men were sobbing and screaming as Francis placed a two and half inch wood drill bit into the drill. It was pointed in the center and then winged out. It was used for drilling out holes for door knobs and other wood working projects. He stood between the two men with the drill ready for use. He pulled on the trigger several times as he pointed it at each man. “Well, neither one of you wants to speak up, so I guess I will just choose the old fashioned way: eenie, meenie, miney, moe.” Then, he walked over to his second victim and began to beat him with the steel wire, shredding the man’s skin with each strike. The screams gave him a huge adrenaline rush, and he grabbed the drill, pulled the trigger to full power, and began to drill into the distended bladder of his victim. Blood and urine flowed out over his hands onto the ground. The man’s friend hung on the wall across from him watching, listening to the screams, knowing he was next.

The call came in to Jim at six thirty p.m. that two bodies had been discovered in the LA river between Tampa and Corbin. He was in Chatsworth, so he wasn’t too far from the scene. When he arrived, there was local media and the usual onlookers. He walked up to the officer directing traffic away from the scene and asked for the first on scene. The officer pointed toward the river and the wash walls where two patrol officers were standing. He half walked, half slid down the steep concrete walls into the middle of the basin. “What do we have?” he asked. One of the cops looked at him and said, “Nothing that’s your business; this is LAPD jurisdiction. What’s the Sheriff’s Department got to do with it?” He smiled and turned to one of the other nearby officers. “Where’s the watch commander?” “Not on scene yet.” He looked back at the smart ass officer and said, “You’re in my river basin, asshole. This entire area is my jurisdiction. Now why don’t you use that smart ass mouth for some good and tell me how you ended up on MY scene. Or do you want to wait for me to talk to your commander?” There were a few moments of tension broken by a familiar voice calling out to Jim.

It was John Zimmer, an LAPD Captain who heard the call and decided to stop by on his way home. He and Jim went back a lot of years, so when Zimmer started chatting with him, the officer with the smart mouth started to walk away. Jim saw him out of the corner of his eye, “Hold on there, officer. You two get over here.” He looked at the name tag on the smart ass. “John, this is Officer Reed. When I arrived on scene I wanted to ask him some questions, and he responded with, gee, what was it that you said to me? Oh yea… ‘Not your business.’ John, would you tell Officer Reed what I have to do with it?” John’s face got grave, “How long have you been on the force?” “Six months, sir.” “Six whole months?” “Yes sir.” “I suggest you look up proper procedure and jurisdiction when you get back to the station because this is LA County jurisdiction, and you just insulted not only a very good friend of mine but one of the best homicide detectives in law enforcement. You two were first on scene?” “Yes sir.” “Then I’m going to go over and talk to some of the media folks to try and placate them, and you two are going to politely apologize to Detective O’Brian and then answer every question that he has. Am I clear?” “Yes sir!” John turned to Jim. “We’ll catch up in a few. Let me go and calm the media.” Jim smiled as he walked away. He then turned to the young officer with a big smile on his face and asked, “So, smart ass, do you want to answer my questions now?”

The young officer apologized up and down. Jim finally told him to shut up and said, “I have enough of your lip prints on my ass. Tell me how you ended up here.” “We received a call at six p.m. that two bodies had been discovered in the basin.” “Okay…so then what did you two do?” “My partner and I spoke to an indigent who was upset. He said that two of his friends were down in the river, and they were dead. So I asked him to stay put while I called for backup, and we went down into the basin to have a look.” “Where’s the indigent?” They pointed to an old man in tattered clothing sitting against the fence off in the distance. “He’s been apprised to remain on scene to be interviewed,” Reed’s partner told Jim. “Okay…why don’t the three of us take a walk down to the crime scene?” He started over toward a makeshift tent area in the middle of the basin. There, side by side, were the nude cut up remains of two men. He knew immediately what he was dealing with. He grabbed his cell phone and called for his team, then he questioned the officers and went to speak to the old man.

Jim limped his way back up the steep sides of the basin to where the old man was sitting. He was dirty, his clothes were grungy, and Jim half anticipated needing a slum interrupter to help with his questioning the witness. As he approached, the old man stood up and looked Jim in the eye. Jim told him to relax, but he stood silent. “I’m certain you’re traumatized by what you found here. Can you tell me how you came to find these men?” “They hadn’t shown up for breakfast, officer. It has been our habit to break bread each morning at six thirty, going on… oh at least ten years.” His proper stance and grasp of the English language caught Jim off guard. He was expecting a babbling fool. Instead he had a man of sophistication, at least in his verbal skills. “So they missed breakfast. What made you decide to come looking for them?” The man was leaning against the fence. “It is our custom to play chess in the afternoon, or I should say I have been working on teaching them the game. Gerald had a keen intellect, but he had never been properly educated. His partner, Raymond, was a tad below dull normal, so chess was out of the question for him, but he liked to pretend that he was involved and would ask questions.”

“Did you see anyone around the bodies when you arrived?” He nodded. “I know this is hard to talk about, but can you tell me what you saw?” He smiled and said, “It’s not hard at all for me to discuss, officer. I was an infantryman in World War II and in the Korean conflict. This is not the first time I have seen a body torn asunder, sir. I did see a person standing on top of the river looking down at me as I approached their encampment.” “Can you describe him to me?” “He was at quite a distance, at least a hundred yards, short, squat heavy, wearing a hooded sweatshirt. I’m not saying that he had anything to do with this, you understand, simply that he was out of place for the time of day, and in a most peculiar spot on the edge of the basin.”